OBAMA-CLINTON-TRUMPERnomics: The Massive Transfer of Wealth to the Super Rich Ratcheted up!

The American oligarchy, steeped in criminality and parasitism, can produce only a government of war, social reaction and repression. In its blind avarice, it is creating the conditions for unprecedented social upheavals. It is hurtling toward its own revolutionary demise at the hands of the working class.

BUT WE KNOW WHERE THEY LIVE!

“The massive transfer of wealth will not go to investment, but to acquiring bigger diamonds; more luxurious mansions, yachts and private jets; new privateislands; more security guards and better-protected gated communities tosegregate the financial nobility from the masses whom they despise and fear.”

“Our entire crony capitalist system, Democrat and Republican alike,

has become a kleptocracy approaching par with third-world hell-holes.

This is the way a great country is raided by its elite.” ---- Karen

McQuillan AMERICAN THINKER.com

On May 9, US Secretary of Education Betsy DeVos delivered the keynote address for the annual Arizona State University + Global Silicon Valley (ASU+GSV) Summit in Salt Lake City. The event took place the day before the billionaire heiress was roundly booed by the graduating class at Bethune-Cookman University.

Addressing a standing-room only audience of venture capitalists and school privatizers, DeVos dismissed the American education system as “an outdated Prussian education model.” She emphasized her desire to end government’s role in education and called for scrapping the Higher Education Act of 1965.

Apparently, the US secretary views with contempt the pioneering of free, tax-funded and public education established in the north German state in the early 1800s. The “Prussian model,” which was deeply influenced by the ideas of the Enlightenment and the French Revolution, was to become the international model for modern mass education. Minister of Education Wilhelm von Humboldt, appointed in 1809, is largely credited for this vision of education based on inculcating literacy, broad general knowledge, cosmopolitan-mindedness and academic freedom.

The system was already groundbreaking by the 1830s, featuring professional teacher training, a national curriculum, an extended school year to accommodate rural children, a basic salary for teachers, funding for school buildings and even free and mandatory kindergarten. “The Prussian approach was used for example in the Michigan Constitution of 1835, which fully embraced the Prussian system by introducing a range of primary schools, secondary schools, and the University of Michigan itself, all administered by the state and supported with tax-based funding,” according to Wikipedia.

In 1843 Horace Mann, considered the “father of the common school movement” in the US, visited Germany to study and replicate the “Prussian model.” France and Great Britain enacted compulsory schooling in the 1880s.

It is interesting to note that the “Prussian model” contrasted with a type of Calvinistic utilitarianism promoted by English and Swiss education reformers. DeVos has traced her ideological influences to Andrew Kuyper, a neo-Calvinist opponent of secular education.

DeVos is fully conscious of the scale of the social counterrevolution she wants to impose on American education. Schooling should be largely returned to the churches, according to this arch-reactionary, along with for-profit education companies.

DeVos went on to tell the friendly crowd of edu-business investors and speculators that she was for “get[ing] the federal government out of the way so you can do your job…. It’s time for us to break out of the confines of the federal government’s arcane approach to education,” she emphasized, according to the website EdSurge.

She made her usual “school choice” arguments couched in populist bromides, as in, “Those who are closest to the problem are those best equipped to solve it.” She restated her hostility to universal public education: “Our education-delivery method should be as diverse as the kids they serve, instead of our habit of forcing them into a one-size-fits-all model.” The assembled entrepreneurs were all aware these were code words for opening up the education “market” for profiteering, in addition to slotting poorer children into low-skill utilitarian jobs.

She promised to “cut the red tape” for education businesses and described the education technology industry as a “thousand flowers, and we haven’t planted the whole garden yet.”

At the conclusion of her address, DeVos was asked about the pending reauthorization of the 1965 Higher Education Act, originally signed by Lyndon Johnson as part of his Great Society programs. “Why would we re-authorize an act that is [more than] 50 years old and keeps getting amended? Why don’t we start afresh?” she replied.

The notion of jettisoning the landmark education legislation must have been music to ears of GSV Capital Assets investors. The Higher Education Act of 1965—enacted under the pressure of a mass working-class struggles and the civil rights movement—opened college doors to millions of middle and working class youth for the first time in US history.

HEA provided funding for grants and scholarships, federally-backed and subsidized loans, created work-study job opportunities, provided resources for libraries and graduate programs and supported the creation of a system of community colleges nationally, which today educate nearly half of all US students at nominal cost.

The 1965 HEA was made law alongside the Voting Rights Act, the Elementary and Secondary Education Act (ESEA) and Medicare. All these reforms, won through mass struggles, have been steadily undermined, by Democrats and Republicans alike, and are now targeted for destruction by the Trump administration.

Of course, DeVos’s facile dismissal of the Higher Education Act is not surprising from an administration that seeks to turn the clock back for the working class to the 19th century and from a secretary who has expressed support for child labor.

The highly political personnel directing the Global Silicon Valley group, like DeVos, are aiming well beyond the immediate prospects of cashing in on the education market. They have advanced a document “2020 Vision: A History of the Future,” which links the business of education technology, profit potentials and national social policy.

This document makes a direct parallel between the evolution of the healthcare industry and the present position of education companies. In 1970, GSV points out, the health care industry only represented 8 percent of GDP and had 2 percent of capital markets, whereas today its holds 18 percent of GDP and 16 percent of capital markets. Likewise, GSV projects a massive growth in the education market—at least a 3 percent rise in GDP sector with more than 100 private education companies boasting a market capitalization topping $1 billion. “This represents a mind-blowing trillion dollar opportunity,” the document concludes.

Of course, the growing profitability of the health care industry was at the direct expense of the actual health of the US population, which is now reeling from the near-destruction of the employer-based health care system, the skyrocketing costs of drugs and the resultant declines in lifespans. The plundering of public education by the financial elite will now visit the same destructive policies upon children just beginning their lives.

The reactionary political thinkers behind Global Silicon Valley’s bank are not oblivious to the political crisis they are provoking. Their statement warns that the growth of CEO pay and social inequality has also meant protests like Occupy Wall Street and an “exploding population of low-income students.” For example, “2020 Vision” documents the spread of poverty throughout the US South, showing that between 2000 and 2013, the number of states in which more than 50 percent of the student population was low-income grew from four to 20.

Bluntly stating that a “growing segment of American society doesn’t believe that it is participating in the future,” they add, “As Aristotle observed, ‘Inequality is the parent of revolution’.”

With such considerations in mind no doubt, “2020 Vision” puts forward among its solutions the need for universal national service to address the millions of young people without a future.

GSV works with and promotes General Stanley McChrystal’s call for universal military service to “strengthen a national ethos” and “restore the social fabric of the United States.”

But the venture capitalists add their own entrepreneurial twist to this call for a strong dose of patriotism and obedience among the young. Reprising the words of former Chairman of the Joint Chiefs Colin Powell, GSV calls for mandatory national service “as a force multiplier” for business.

In this regard, GSV lauds Israel as a visionary “Start Up Nation.” Ignoring the war crimes and social conditions of Israel—a brutal apartheid-like regime based on the dispossession and repression of the Palestinian people and one of the most socially unequal societies in the industrialized world—GSV glorifies it as the world’s best incubator of new businesses, a positive model for the US. In fact, they ascribe the garrison state’s success in business development to the Israeli requirement for two to three years of military service.

Betsy DeVos’s political bedfellows at GSV and their “2020 Vision” are a clear warning as to US policy plans for the destruction of public education and the dragooning of another generation into growing imperialist wars.

WASHINGTON (May 12, 2017) – The Bureau of Labor Statistics’ data for the first quarter of 2017 shows abysmal labor force participation, particularly for those without a college education. A new analysis by the Center for Immigration Studies shows that the participation rate has not returned to pre-2007 recession levels, and the rate looks even worse relative to 2000. The unemployment rate has improved in recent years; but the numbers are deceiving, as the official unemployment rate includes only those who have looked for a job in the last four weeks and not those of working-age who are no longer working or looking for work.

Dr. Steven Camarota, the Center’s director of research and author of the analysis, said, “These newest employment numbers show the dismal employment picture for less-educated, low-skilled workers – the vulnerable Americans who compete with H-2B non-agricultural guest worker visa holders for jobs like landscaper, construction worker , housekeeper, waiter, bellhop, or kitchen helper." Congress recently voted to give DHS Secretary Kelly the authority to more than double the number of H-2B visas issued.

Camarota concluded, "The latest numbers show no evidence of there being a shortage of U.S. workers for these jobs that are presently being filled by foreign workers."

The overall unemployment rate for natives in the first quarter of 2017 was 4.9 percent (6.5 million), a dramatic improvement over the peak in the first quarter of 2010 at 10.2 percent. However, the rate is still above the 4.4 percent in the same quarter in 2000.

The overall unemployment rate obscures the low labor force participation rate, however, especially among those without a college education.

There has been a long-term decline in the labor force participation rate of working-age (18 to 65) natives without a bachelor's degree. Only 69.6 percent of natives in this group were in the labor force in the first quarter of 2017; in 2007, before the recession, it was 73.8 percent, and in the first quarter of 2000 it was 76.1 percent.

The labor force participation rate of natives without a college degree shows no meaningful improvement in the last four years. For example, in the first quarter of 2012 it was actually slightly better than it was in the first quarter of 2017.

The decline in labor force participation among those without a bachelor's degree is even more profound when it is measured relative to those who are more educated.

In the first quarter of 2017, 69.6 percent of natives without a bachelor's degree were in the labor force, compared to 85.5 percent of those with a bachelor's degree — a 15.9 percentage-point difference. In the first quarter of 2007, the gap was 12.4 percentage points, and in the first quarter of 2000 the gap was 11.7 percentage points.

Among Immigrants:

Working-age immigrants without a college education also have not fared well since the recession. Unlike the labor force participation of natives, immigrants without a college education did improve their situation between 2000 and 2007. But it has not returned to 2007 levels. Also like natives, there has been no meaningful progress in the last few years.

In the first quarter of 2017, the labor force participation rate of immigrants (18 to 65) without a bachelor's degree was 72.1 percent, somewhat better than that of natives, but still below their rate of 73.4 percent in the first quarter of 2007.

Immigrants and Natives Not in the Labor Force:

In the first quarter of 2017, there were a total 50.6 million immigrants and natives ages 18 to 65 not in the labor force, up from 43.3 million in 2007 and 37.2 million in 2000.

Of the 50.6 million currently not in the labor force, 40.7 million (80 percent) did not have a bachelor's degree.

The above figures do not include the unemployed, who are considered to be part of the labor force because, although they are not working, they are looking for work. There were almost eight million unemployed immigrants and natives in the first quarter of this year; more than three-fourths of the unemployed do not have a bachelor's degree.

“The lifetime costs of Social Security and Medicare benefits of illegal immigrant beneficiaries of President Obama’s executive amnesty would be well over a trillion dollars, according to Heritage Foundation expert Robert Rector’s prepared testimony for a House panel obtained in advance by Breitbart News.”

AMERICA: NO LEGAL NEED APPLY

REPORT: The assault to finish off the American middle-class is NOT over

“The report noted that many illegals don't have jobs or have difficulty in landing good jobs because of local laws.”

“However, it identified several states that have begun easing employment laws so that illegals can get a job.”

THE HORDES KEEP COMING!

While the declining job market in the United States may be discouraging some would-be border crossers, a flow of illegal aliens continues unabated, with many entering the United States as drug-smuggling “mules.”

“The lifetime costs of Social Security and Medicare benefits of illegal immigrant beneficiaries of President Obama’s executive amnesty would be well over a trillion dollars, according to Heritage Foundation expert Robert Rector’s prepared testimony for a House panel obtained in advance by Breitbart News.”

US corporate profits up 13.9 percent on cost-cutting and low wages

By Barry Grey9 May 2017

Former Obama administration officials joined the Trump administration and the media in hailing the April employment figures released Friday as proof that the US economy has reached “full employment” and essentially completed its “recovery” from the Great Recession.

According to the Bureau of Labor Statistics, the US economy added 211,000 private-sector non-farm jobs in April and the official jobless rate dropped to 4.4 percent, the lowest level in more than a decade.

“JOBS, JOBS, JOBS!” tweeted President Donald Trump. “Great news,” Labor Secretary Alexander Acosta said on Twitter, adding later in a statement, “The steady and sustained increase in job creation equals new paychecks for American workers and income for American families.”

Jason Furman, the chief economic adviser in the Obama administration, said, “The momentum in the job market is really impressive.” The New York Times wrote that the report showed “a labor market closing in on full capacity,” particularly in “the country’s flourishing urban centers.”

On Monday, Cleveland Federal Reserve President Loretta Mester, speaking in Chicago, said, “We have met the maximum employment part of our mandate and inflation is nearing our 2 percent goal.”

The message from the ruling elite is clear: This is as good as it gets.

To present the jobs report as proof of a healthy economy, certain aspects of the report itself had to be downplayed or ignored, including the fact that average job creation so far this year, 185,000 a month, is actually lower than in 2014 and 2015. Even more significant, the number of people not in the labor force actually rose by 162,000 last month, and the proportion of the population in the labor force fell by a tenth of a percent. At 62.8 percent, the labor force participation rate remains only marginally above a four-decade low.

While the share of prime working age Americans (25 to 54) who are employed rose in April, it remains well below the level at the peak of the last economic cycle and even further below the level in 2000. This means there are millions of working-age people who have been effectively excluded from the job market as a result of decades of factory closures and mass layoffs, a process that has intensified since the 2008 financial crash. These millions of people, living on the edge of society, are not even counted in the official unemployment rate.

Moreover, the vast bulk of the new jobs created in April were once again in the cheap-labor service sector, where many workers receive poverty-level wages. The statistic that is perhaps most revealing about what is being presented as the “new normal” for a healthy economy is the miserable year-on-year average wage increase of 2.5 percent, barely above the official inflation rate.

Even in 2006 and 2007, annual wage growth for non-managerial workers of 4 percent or more was normal. That has been cut almost in half.

On Saturday, the same day the Wall Street Journal reported the April employment figures, the newspaper featured a front-page article on US corporate profits in the first three months of 2017 that pointed to the real driving forces of the new “full employment” economy. Profits at S&P 500 companies surged an estimated 13.9 percent in the first quarter, the biggest quarterly profit gain in five years.

At the heart of the profit bonanza, the Journal explained, was a relentless and ongoing drive to cut costs by holding down wages, cutting jobs and slashing spending on new plants and equipment. US big business, the newspaper wrote, was reaping “the benefits of years of belt-tightening” under conditions of a pickup in demand.

Because of the continuing focus on slashing costs, profits rose nearly twice as fast as revenue. Spending on equipment and buildings, i.e., productive investment, rose by a mere 1.5 percent in the first quarter. Half the sectors of the US economy actually cut capital spending from a year earlier.

The Journal provided some examples. Caterpillar, the heavy machinery giant, reported a quarterly sales increase of about 4 percent, while doubling its profit, excluding restructuring costs. The company has cut its global workforce by at least 16,000 since late 2015, a reduction of roughly 10 percent. It has closed or announced the shutdown of plants in South Carolina, Florida, North Carolina, Illinois and Belgium.

The energy sector, partially recovering from the oil price collapse of previous years, saw a 31 percent rise in revenues from the year-ago period. Based on its ruthless cost-cutting over the past two years, including the elimination of over 200,000 jobs, the sector enjoyed a profit boost of 647 percent.

Exxon Mobil, whose former CEO Rex Tillerson is now Trump’s secretary of state, reported a doubling of its profits in the first quarter, while its capital expenditures dropped by 19 percent, as it “remained disciplined in its investment.”

Much of the cash being taken in by the top corporations on this entirely regressive basis is being funneled to big shareholders in the form of dividends and stock buybacks.

On Sunday, the Financial Times devoted its “The Big Read” page to an article extolling the achievements of 3G Capital, an investment fund that partnered with Warren Buffett to buy the food conglomerate Heinz in 2013 and merge it with Kraft Foods two years later. What the newspaper called “The lean and mean approach of 3G” has resulted in more than 10,000 Heinz and Kraft workers—one-fifth of the work force—being laid off and seven factories closed down.

3G’s “brutal but disciplined attack on costs” produced a 58 percent surge in profits within two years, and a profit margin of 28 percent. This compares to an average profit margin in the food industry of 16 percent.

Such is the utterly parasitic secret to the much-touted “recovery” in the US economy and job market. A combination of speculation that feeds off of the destruction of productive forces and ever greater exploitation of the working class benefits a new aristocracy by impoverishing ever broader layers of the US and world population.

AMERICA’S YOUTH STARVE

FOR EIGHT YEARS BARACK OBAMA AND HIS HAREM OF CORRUPT DEM POLS HAVE SABOTAGED OUR BORDERS TO EASE TENS OF MILLIONS OF ILLEGALS INTO OUR JOBS, WELFARE OFFICES AND VOTING BOOTHS.

The new reports show that in addition to “traditional” coping strategies of skipping meals and eating cheap food, these teens and pre-teens are increasingly forced into shoplifting, stealing, selling drugs, joining a gang, or selling their bodies for money in a struggle to eat properly.

"Possibly most affected by this shift in the economy is the Millennial generation, those aged 18-30. The report notes that more than half of those under age 25 participate in independent work, not just in the United States but throughout the European Union as well."

Secretary of Education Betsy DeVos signed an order last Tuesday halting plans made under the Obama administration regarding the national student loan servicing and debt collection system.

In a memo to James Runcie of the Federal Student Aid Office, DeVos formally withdrew three Obama-era memos calling for the federal government to select a single vendor to build a new system for servicing its student loans.

Currently the Federal government has $800 million in contracts with nine different loan servicing companies to carry out the tasks of sending bills, collecting payments, and dealing with borrower issues for the more than $1 trillion of student loans. Under this setup the federal government has directly profited from the student loan crisis to the tune of about $10 billion per year.

The Obama-era plans to consolidate the vendor contracts into one did not represent a genuine effort to address the student loan collection scandals or reform the exploitative loan system more generally. The memos were the product of a damage control campaign following a series of lawsuits and scandals involving the Department of Education and the explosion of the student debt crisis following the 2008 financial crisis.

Public education as a whole came under brutal attack as part of the Obama administration’s effort to shift the burden of the financial crisis onto the backs of the working class. Major cuts were made to spending on education and consequently public universities compensated for the loss by increasing tuition nationally by 33 percent over the course of the first six years of the Obama administration. These costs, paired with the rising costs of living and stagnating wages, resulted in a sharp spike in student debt.

As the situation was seized upon by the loan companies with the backing of the Department of Education, the government agency became the target of growing anger for employing and protecting the predatory student loan collection agencies.

The token measures offered under by the Obama administration, and only after enormous pressure, did nothing to curb the loan collectors’ scandalous behavior. While consolidation of the loan agencies may appear to have been a progressive step, it is doubtful that this move would have made any positive difference at all to students. This is supported by the negotiating process leading up to the plan’s implementation.

Bidding for the single vendor contract to service student loans, which would have been the largest federal contract outside of the military, started about a year ago. The largest student loan servicer in the country, Navient, quickly emerged as the frontrunner.

Navient oversees roughly $300 billion in student loans for more than 12 million borrowers, 6 million of whom are under contract with the Department of Education. In total, the Delaware-based corporation, formed out of the split of student loan servicer Sallie Mae in 2014, accounts for nearly one-fourth of all student loan borrowers.

Navient is among the most notorious student loan agencies. The company paid $97 million in a settlement in 2014 alone for illegally maximizing late fees on the student loans of military personnel. Over 60,000 loans were affected by the violation of the 6 percent interest rate cap which is afforded to active duty service members. It was this company which the Obama administration was prepared to task with overseeing great “reforms.”

Any attempt to paint the Obama administration as an ally of students or good for education falls flat in the face of the facts. However, this is not to say there is anything positive about DeVos’ reversal.

Last week’s withdrawal of the Obama-era reforms indicates a further shift to the right by the new Trump administration. DeVos’s actions, in line with the Trump administration’s moves on foreign policy, immigration, and environmental protections, mark an escalation based on the framework established by the Obama administration.

DeVos has repeatedly expressed plans for the Department of Education to slash federal funding and regulations—as weak as they were to begin with—shifting the weight of public services into the hands of state officials and ultimately private investors.

The recent order claimed that the previous plans lacked “proper management cohesion,” in addition to being too costly. Without laying out a new policy agenda, DeVos stated that an effort was underway to “acquire new federal student loan capabilities that will provide borrowers with the tools necessary to efficiently repay their debt.”

DeVos, a billionaire from Michigan, is a well-known ideological opponent of public education. She and her family have donated millions of dollars to politicians and lobbying groups that support the funneling of tax dollars to private and religious schools through voucher programs and removing oversight of education spending through the establishment of charter schools.

Her inner circle is filled with some of the most right-wing conservative figures in the US. There is no question as to her intentions as head of the Department of Education: to destroy public education in the service of private interests.

Opposition to DeVos and the attack on education will not come from the Democratic Party despite the theatrical campaign they waged during her senate confirmation. Behind their nominal defense of “struggling families” from “unnecessary financial burden,” as leading Senators have put it, lies the Democratic Party’s own legacy of attacking public education and promoting charter schools, extending back decades. The Democrats’ complicity in the corporate-driven school “reform” is well documented in cities like Chicago and Detroit.

AMERICA’S YOUTH STARVE

FOR EIGHT YEARS BARACK OBAMA AND HIS HAREM OF CORRUPT DEM POLS HAVE SABOTAGED OUR BORDERS TO EASE TENS OF MILLIONS OF ILLEGALS INTO OUR JOBS, WELFARE OFFICES AND VOTING BOOTHS.

The new reports show that in addition to “traditional” coping strategies of skipping meals and eating cheap food, these teens and pre-teens are increasingly forced into shoplifting, stealing, selling drugs, joining a gang, or selling their bodies for money in a struggle to eat properly.

The new reports show that in addition to “traditional” coping strategies of skipping meals and eating cheap food, these teens and pre-teens are increasingly forced into shoplifting, stealing, selling drugs, joining a gang, or selling their bodies for money in a struggle to eat properly.

"Possibly most affected by this shift in the economy is the Millennial generation, those aged 18-30. The report notes that more than half of those under age 25 participate in independent work, not just in the United States but throughout the European Union as well."

Trump Can Create 180,000 New Jobs for America with a Stroke of His Pen

President Trump saved several thousand factory jobs by brow-beating some CEOs, but he could also do something much more useful: He could create about 180,000 new jobs for American college grads just by abolishing an obscure bit of the immigration machinery.

Here's a way to help the middle class without dealing with Congress; the president can do it with a stroke of the pen. It would not be a question of saving existing jobs (as in the case of the factory workers). It would lead to the creation of an additional 180,000 jobs for U.S. residents. Good jobs, too.

Currently, thanks to prior administrations, there is a generally unknown program in which the federal government subsidizes (through tax breaks) the hiring of 180,000 foreign college grads, taking jobs that could be held by Americans. It has the misleading title of Optional Practical Training (OPT) as there is no training involved, and though dedicated to foreign college graduates, it is disguised as part of the F-1 program for foreign students.

Without a lick of input from Congress, the Obama administration, building on a scheme used by the Bush II administration, expanded the OPT program. According to the Institute for International Education (IIE), there were 147,498 aliens holding OPT jobs in the American economy in the 2015-2016 academic year.

Given the recent annual increases in the program (22 percent-plus from 2014-2015 to 2015-2016) and given the fact the IIE survey does not cover (appropriately) the worst of the visa mills, which also have the power to issue OPT certificates, the actual number of OPT jobs at the moment is probably in the neighborhood of 180,000.

That is a prize worthy of special attention. More than 180,000 good jobs.

OPT certificates are not issued by the U.S. government, they are issued by colleges and universities that graduate the alien students. An OPT certificate is good for as much as three full years of legal status in the U.S. labor market, with the longer ones going to foreigners who have trained in the STEM fields (science, technology, engineering and mathematics).

The best part of OPT for the foreign alums — and a devastating factor to U.S. resident college grads (both citizens and green card holders) — is that employers are given a $10,000-$15,000 bonus for hiring an alien rather than an American with the same salary.

This is hard to believe, but true; recent administrations have waved a magic wand over the foreign grads and called them "students" so that the usual payroll taxes (Social Security and Medicare) do not apply to either their employers or to the students.

So the employer, faced with two equally qualified candidates for, say, a $60,000 a year job (for three years), each candidate being willing to work for that salary, has his choice. If he hires the alien the total payroll costs for three years will be $180,000; if he hires the citizen alternative, the employer will pay $193,770. The higher the salary, the bigger the bonus to the employer hiring the alien.

Since this strange program is based solely on administrative rulings, the president (or Secretary Kelly at DHS) can simply abolish it with an executive order.

My suggestion would be to announce that no more new OPT certificates will be issued from the day of the order, and that no renewals will be granted, either. But aliens holding these permits should be allowed to keep working until the current permissions expire. In that way there would be no need for massive dismissals of alien workers on short notice, but the act would, over three years, open up at least 180,000 new jobs for residents of America.

And there would be a substantial bonus — one to two billion dollars a year — for our older citizens, as the undeserved current savings come right out of the hide of the Medicare and Social Security systems. So this move would not only be in line with the president's promise to increase the number of jobs for working-age Americans, it would also fit in with his promise not to cut Social Security and Medicare benefits for one-time working Americans.

In short, a really, really good twofer!

David North, a fellow at the Center for Immigration Studies, has over 40 years of immigration policy experience.

"Possibly most affected by this shift in the economy is the
Millennial generation, those aged 18-30. The report notes that more
than half of those under age 25 participate in independent work, not
just in the United States but throughout the European Union
as well."

Recent reports on the
US housing market have revealed that homeownership levels in the US have
dropped to record lows in the wake of the 2008 financial crisis.

A report released
last week by the Pew Research Center shows homeownership rates are at the lowest
level in over 20 years, while US Census data evaluated by real estate firm
Trulia show that young people aged 18-24 are living with their parents in
numbers not seen since 1940, the year after the Great Depression officially
ended.

According to the data accumulated by Trulia, and reported by the Wall
Street Journal, the share of young people living with parents in the US in
2016 was nearly 40 percent. Noting that homeownership “is closely correlated
with housing affordability and income,” the Journal states
that the only other period in which comparable rates were seen was over 75
years ago. In contrast, only 24.1 percent of young people were living with
their parents in 1960.

Those 18 to 24 years old, known as “millennials,” have surpassed
Baby Boomers (ages 51-69) as the country’s largest living generation. However,
the Journal notes a Harvard Joint Center for Housing Studies
report, which found that despite the number of people under the age of 30
increasing by over 5 million since 2006, there are less than 200,000 new
homeowners within this group today.

A report released by
Pew provides a more detailed breakdown of the loss in homeownership affecting
broad sections of the working class. In 2004, homeownership in the US hit a
modern peak of 69 percent. By contrast, the homeownership rate had fallen to
63.5 percent in 2016. Current homeownership rates have sunk to levels lower
than in 1994, the period prior to the “dot-com” boom, when home values began
their rapid growth.

Significantly, the
Pew study shows that young people have suffered the most under today’s
conditions. In 2004, 43 percent of people under the age of 35 owned homes.
Today, that number has fallen to 35.2 percent, a drop of 18 percent from 12
years earlier. Homeownership for people age 35-44 declined by 16 percent in
this same period.

When based upon
income, the collapse was also stark. The report notes that homeownership for
people with household incomes lower than $44,000 fell from a high of 52.9
percent in 2005 to 47.1 percent in 2015. This was in contrast to better-off
homeowners, making yearly incomes of between $44,000 and $132,000, and
high-income homeowners making over $132,000, who saw a drop from 73.8 to 68.3
percent and from 86.6 to 80.3 percent, respectively.

The Pew report found
that African Americans were the hardest hit racial group in the US, with
homeownership rates falling from a peak of 49.1 percent in 2004 to 41.3 percent
today. Whites and Hispanics also saw their homeownership rates plummet, from 76
percent to 71.9 percent and from 48.1 percent to 47 percent, respectively. In
addition, the number of loan applications has collapsed since 2004. According
to Pew, housing loans for whites have fallen by 45 percent; 77 percent for
African Americans and 76 percent for Hispanic residents.

The 2008 collapse of
the housing market precluded millions of people from ever obtaining ownership
of a home, an aspiration long-associated with the “American Dream.” The report
notes that nearly 72 percent of all renters wish to own their homes, but are
blocked from doing so by stringent rules put in place to curb the illegal
lending practices that occurred in the lead-up to the housing collapse.

A report released two
weeks ago by the Center for Disease Control and Prevention found that life
expectancy fell for the entire US population for the first time in over 20
years in the period from 2014-2015, the last year on record. A recent study
produced by economists Thomas Piketty, Emmanuel Saez and Gabriel Zucman show a
vast growth in total income inequality in the US since 1980, with the top 1
percent obtaining the same percentage of income today that the bottom 50
percent of the US population held in 1980.

A study released in
early December by economists from Harvard, Stanford and the University of California
at Berkeley found that the percentage of Americans making more in income than
their parents had collapsed from over 90 percent in 1970 to only 51 percent in
2014.

These reports and
others released in the recent period further undermine President Barack Obama’s
claim that Americans are doing “pretty darn great” thanks to his
administration’s policies. The decline in support from people 18-29 was among
the key factors in the November 8 defeat of Democratic presidential nominee
Hillary Clinton, who had promised to continue the policies of the Obama
administration.

The new reports show that in addition to
“traditional” coping strategies of skipping meals and eating cheap food, these
teens and pre-teens are increasingly forced into shoplifting, stealing, selling
drugs, joining a gang, or selling their bodies for money in a struggle to eat
properly.

OBAMA-CLINTONOMICS:

Build the La Raza Democrat Party base with open
borders, no ID to vote Democrat, no E-VERIFY and NO DAMNED LEGAL NEED TO APPLY.

"Republicans
should call for lower immigration to stop the Democrat voter recruitment.
But more importantly, all Americans should call for lower immigration in order
to offer a better opportunity of finding jobs for those millions of their
fellow Americans of all political persuasions who would like to work."